“Molecular profiling of a tumor has really taken off over the last few years, and a few years ago, it could take several weeks for these results to come back. We can now test for the changes we can target in a lung tumor within four to five days here at Hopkins,” says Russell K. Hales, M.D.
Hales, who is a radiation oncologist at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus, added, “There are some rare mutations that sometimes can take longer, but our goal is to have the patient's molecular profiling complete in four or five days. There are also national and international studies looking at other targets, and sometimes we participate in these, and enroll patients on studies where your tumor may be sent to other areas, in this country, or others, to further define other targets.”